by Jo Nesbo
‘I’m not?’
‘No.’ She handed me the folder. I opened it and flipped through the documents. They were reports. Armed robbery. Causing bodily harm. Grievous bodily harm. Rape. Twenty, maybe thirty of them.
‘And what is the connection?’
‘Brad Lowe and his gang,’ said Gardell. ‘This is just a selection, but I think it might interest you.’
I looked at her again. ‘I think I know what you’re risking by doing this, Chief Inspector. So why are you doing it?’
She sighed. Put the sunglasses on again. ‘Why do we do anything at all in this fucked-up world?’
Then she left.
* * *
—
In the course of that afternoon I spoke to most of those who had signed the complaints in the folder.
The ones I contacted first were those who had been raped. On the assumption that they, or their fathers or brothers, would be most highly motivated and easiest to persuade. But presently I realised that what Gardell had given me was already some kind of shortlist of names of people who not only had good reasons to want revenge but were physically and mentally capable of getting it. At least if they weren’t acting alone.
‘You mean vigilantes?’ said one of those I spoke to.
I savoured the word. It represented everything I was against. At least, in a society in which there was an already functioning judicial system it did. But in the absence of such a thing then it wasn’t vigilante activity as such but the best alternative means of getting justice. That was the way to look at it: not as breaking the law but as a kind of emergency supplement to the law.
I tried to explain this to the person involved, but the legal terms I used might have made it difficult to follow my reasoning.
‘Sounds like vigilantes to me,’ he said. ‘I’m in.’
By that evening I was able to tell Heidi that I had the backing of fifteen grown men. And that one of them had undertaken to provide us with weapons.
I had expected her to be pleased – or at least to snap out of that darkly apathetic mood she’d sunk into since the attack – but instead she just stared at me as though I were a stranger.
‘Find Amy,’ was all she said, and closed the door to our bedroom.
I slept in the living room and heard an animal howling and howling out there in the night, and the dull thuds of exploding grenades that might have been a block away or ten blocks away, it was impossible to tell. I don’t know what kind of animal it was, but it sounded big. I’d heard about the fire in the zoological gardens the previous night and how they had had to release the animals to save them. Good idea, I thought. But if that particular animal was edible…I didn’t have time to complete the thought before I heard a shot and the howling came to an abrupt halt.
* * *
—
‘What you see here represents my most fundamental rights,’ said the bald-headed man as he gestured with his hand towards something that reminded me more than anything else of a collection of insects mounted on pins, only magnified and more grotesque. The wall was covered with handguns. Pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, machine pistols, even a large machine gun mounted on a tripod that looked like someone kneeling.
‘The freedom to defend myself.’
The bald-headed man gave us a pleased smile. He wanted to remain anonymous and had asked us just to call him Fatman. Of the fifteen who had signed up two days earlier three had pulled out. It wasn’t surprising. Initial enthusiasm at the chance for revenge had given way to more rational considerations: other than a short-lived emotional satisfaction, how would it benefit me personally? And what was I risking? When the courts punish criminals the overwhelming power they have access to means they risk little; but what about us? What happens when revenge is taken for revenge?
‘They knew we had weapons, that was why they came,’ said Fatman. ‘But they didn’t find this secret room, so all they got were the Kalashnikovs and the hand grenades. Help yourselves, gentlemen.’
‘What did they do to you and yours?’ asked Larsen – an African American music teacher wearing a freshly pressed blue shirt – as Fatman showed him how to load, prime and change the magazine on the weapon he had chosen.
‘I just told you,’ said Fatman.
‘They…er, stole some rifles?’
‘And my hand grenades.’
‘Grenades. And that was enough to leave you wanting revenge?’
‘Who said anything about revenge? I just want to shoot some bad guys, and now I’ve got a bloody good reason, right?’
‘Nice one,’ said Larsen quietly.
Fatman flushed. ‘How about you?’ he snorted. ‘They take your Volvo?’
I cursed inwardly and closed my eyes. I needed these men to work together, not this. I’d read the reports carefully and knew what was coming.
‘They killed my wife,’ said Larsen.
It went very quiet in this damp basement room. When I opened my eyes again I saw everyone had their gaze fixed on the man in the blue shirt and suit trousers. In the report, Larsen had written that he and his wife were standing on the pavement outside a secret food depot with the food they’d bought. They’d gone there with eight adult relatives; it was the usual thing to move around in packs, it was reckoned to be safer. A motorcycle gang had come at them and the men pulled out the few weapons they had – knives and an old rifle. But the bikes had passed them without slowing down. They thought the danger was over until the last rider tossed out a chain with a hook on it that embedded itself in Larsen’s wife’s thigh and dragged her off down the street, and while the men rushed to her assistance the gang stopped and picked up their bags of food.
‘An artery in her thigh was punctured,’ said Larsen. ‘She bled to death in the street while those bandits picked up the hams and the tins.’
The only sounds that could be heard were Larsen’s hoarse breathing and swallowing.
‘And they had…?’ said a cautious voice.
‘Yes,’ said Larsen, who had regained control of his voice. ‘They were wearing helmets with dead Justitia.’
The men in the room nodded.
One of them coughed.
‘Tell me, that machine gun…does it work?’
* * *
—
Two days later we were ready.
We’d had shooting practice at a rifle range under the direction of Pete Downing, a former Marine who had been involved in house-to-house fighting in Basra in Iraq. Him, me and Chung, a construction engineer, had gone over the drawings of the place Chung had obtained through a contact in the Planning and Building Services Department. Downing had drafted a plan of attack that he went through with us in a room we had rented in the basement of the rifle range. He pointed out that there could be several kidnap victims in the house, playing down in this way the fact that the focus of the action was primarily on Amy and me. The funny thing was that once he was done he turned and spoke to me.
‘Well, Will Adams, think that sounds OK?’
I nodded.
‘Thank you,’ said Downing as he rolled up the large sheets of paper he had drawn on.
I stood up. ‘Then we meet here at midnight,’ I said. ‘Remember, dark clothing.’
The men stood up and filed out. Several of them nodded as they passed me, from which I realised that they regarded me as the leader of the operation. Was that just because I had taken the initiative? Or was something more involved? Was it because of the way I had described not just the practical side of our intended operation but also its moral and socially responsible dimensions? Had my simple remarks about justice not being something you get but something you take given them a thirst for battle they hadn’t been able to feel when they were alone, but that they realised they had been missing now that they had been given a morally acceptable motivation? Maybe. Because maybe they had noticed that I mean
t every word of what I was saying. That it is everyone’s responsibility to cut the head of the Leviathan, the sea monster, before it grows so big it devours us all.
But I don’t think that was on anyone’s mind as our column of three cars crawled up the narrow, twisting road heading towards the villa on the hill. I sat squashed between two others in the back seat and thought only of what I was to do, my own practical role in the planned operation. And that I didn’t want to die. The smell I recognised through the sweat from the others in the car was probably the same as I was giving off myself. Fear.
VII
I awaken to the sounds of shots, people shouting, running footsteps along the corridor.
My first thought was that it was just another party that had got out of hand, that someone had started a fight, probably with Ragnar.
I heard someone try the door of my room. It was locked, the way it always is. It’s not from the fear that someone will come in and rape me. In the first place I know I could take them, and in the second place Brad would chop their head off, and in the third place, you become sort of demagnetised as a sex object for guys when they realise you’re into the same thing as they are: girls. But I also know that the way the drug-taking has, to put it mildly, escalated these days it’s just a question of time before someone tries it. And that will mean so much trouble for them that there’s no reason not to lock the door. But from my point of view they’re the ones who are locked in, not me.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and grabbed the Kalashnikov lying underneath it. Because the voices out in the corridor didn’t belong to any of the boys, and now I heard two loud bangs from shock grenades. Oscar was on watch tonight; what the hell was going on? Had he fallen asleep on the job?
No one trying the doorknob any more – have they moved on? Just then I heard the dull thud of a shot from the other side of the door and the whiplash as the bullet passed my head and hit the wall.
I raised the gun, pushed the security catch into automatic and fired. Even in the half-dark I could see how the salvo perforated the door and the white splinters of wood flaring. Outside, someone fell heavily and began to scream. I pulled on my shoes, trousers and jacket and crossed to the window. Down on the lawn Oscar was lying splayed out on his back in an X-shape, the Kalashnikov beside him, as though he was sunbathing in the moonlight. I made a quick calculation. I didn’t know how many of them there were, but they’d taken out Oscar before he had a chance to raise the alarm, and they had shock grenades. So not just a bunch of amateurs. And who were we? A gang of doped-up kids who knew how to attack but hadn’t had any practice in how to defend. If I didn’t take a decision quickly it was going to be taken for me.
I had the bike key in my pocket.
Shit, I even had a place to go: Maria had asked me to move in with her on a permanent basis. And hadn’t I even considered it, independently of this? OK, Chaos had saved me once, but wasn’t it true that we had all saved each other? That it was the pack, the twelve of us together, that protected us? And not loyalty, or some code of honour. Fuck that. Had anyone here ever sacrificed anything for me? No way.
I got the window open and climbed out, hung from the ledge by my arms and then let go. The roses in the bed below were dead and gone long ago, but not the bramble bushes that had replaced them, big and ugly. It was like rolling around in barbed wire.
* * *
—
I took a deep breath, pulled the pin on the shock grenade and nodded to Downing. He nodded back, turned the handle on the door I had pointed out on the plans as the master bedroom, and pushed it slightly open.
I did as he had shown me, bent low and rolled the grenade along the parquet flooring so that it made as little sound as possible. Downing closed the door again and counted to four.
Even through the closed door the sound was deafening and a flash of light blitzed out through the keyhole.
Downing kicked the door open and we went in, positioning ourselves on each side of the doorway as he had shown us.
My pulse was racing as the beam of my torch searched the room for Amy. It flashed across the window, and on the lawn outside I saw a figure running towards a parked motorcycle. I moved the beam on until it caught something that at first I thought was a sculpture. A boy with pale white skin sat bolt upright in bed, staring as though paralysed. That’s the effect the shock grenade has, Downing had explained.
It was Brad.
Downing yelled at him to put his hands up, but Brad was probably still deaf from the bang and he just stared at us in bewilderment. Downing hit him across the face with the butt of his gun, and a slimy blob of blood and spittle flew through the cone of light.
I pushed Brad backwards onto the bed and sat on top of him. He didn’t struggle.
‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Will. Where is Amy?’
He blinked up at me.
I repeated the question, at the same time pressing the barrel of the pistol I had chosen against his forehead.
‘We know it was you,’ I said. ‘Your sentry’s dead. You want to be next, Brad?’
‘She…’ he began.
It took him two long seconds, time enough for me to start shaking like a leaf on a tree, before he was able to continue:
‘She isn’t here. We let her go as soon as we left Downtown. Didn’t she turn up?’
I don’t know whether it was because he had inherited his father’s repertoire of facial expressions, but I knew he was lying.
I hit him with my gun. And again. Apparently. Because by the time Downing stopped me and I was in control of myself again Brad’s face was a grotesque bloody mask beneath me.
‘She’s dead,’ I said.
‘You don’t know that.’
I closed my eyes. ‘He wouldn’t have lied if she wasn’t dead.’
* * *
—
I climbed on my motorcycle that was standing beneath the large garage overhang. From where I sat I could see across the lawn and into Brad’s room and the dancing light beam of a torch.
They’d got him.
I was about to start the engine. I would have been out of there in seconds flat, but a thought stopped me. The thought of leaving Dumbo, just abandoning him. I glanced at the room he shared with Herbert, the only Black guy in the gang. The light was on inside. Maybe they hadn’t reached them yet. I climbed back off the bike and sprinted across the lawn and over to their window. Stretched up on tiptoes and peered in. Dumbo was sitting on the bed in his underpants and T-shirt, feet dangling as he stared at the door. Herbert was nowhere in sight. I tapped on the glass and Dumbo jumped, but when he saw my face pressed against the windowpane he smiled.
He opened the window. ‘Herbert went out to see what’s going on,’ he said. ‘Do you know –’
‘Put your shoes on!’ I whispered. ‘We’re getting out of here!’
‘But –’
‘Now!’
Dumbo disappeared.
I saw him fiddling with his shoelaces as I counted the seconds. I should have got him shoes with Velcro.
‘Freeze,’ I heard a voice say right behind me.
I turned round. A bald-headed man holding a rifle with telescopic sights was standing there. I continued to turn.
‘Didn’t you hear –’ he began to say, then dropped the rifle and stopped speaking and breathing after my kick hit him between the legs. I saw him collapse to the ground, then turned back to the window. Dumbo was standing on the ledge.
‘Jump!’ I said.
I took his fall, but he was so heavy we both tumbled over onto the grass. Then we were on our feet and he was running after me towards the bikes.
* * *
—
I’d heard Fatman’s voice outside the window and looked out.
A long-legged girl and a small, bow-legged boy were running across the lawn. It was them. I was certain
of it. Everything about them – faces, bodies, their way of moving – was etched fast in my memory from when I sat tied up in the garage. They reached the motorcycles and the girl sat on one of them while the boy climbed up behind her. She fiddled about in her pockets looking for something, keys probably. I saw a red dot dancing on the white T-shirt under her jacket.
Laser.
I opened the window. Fatman was lying on the lawn below, the butt of the rifle to his cheek.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I shouted. ‘We’re not killers.’
‘Shut up,’ he grunted without looking up.
‘That’s an order!’
‘Sorry, but this is my bad guy.’
‘If you shoot, so will I,’ I said. Quietly. That was probably why he stopped and looked up. Saw the pistol pointing at him. Stared as we heard the roar of the motorbike rise, fall and then disappear as it went through the gate and headed down towards the valley.
I lowered the pistol. I don’t know why, but a small part of me had wanted him to shoot them. Because then I could have shot him.
* * *
—
‘The helicopter will be here in four minutes!’ shouts the lieutenant. ‘Everyone who’s boarding, get ready now!’
I only half hear him. Because standing here on the roof of the skyscraper and waiting to say goodbye I’m thinking now about something else: that I had wanted to shoot someone. That I had wanted circumstances to give me an excuse to become a person I don’t believe myself to be. That perhaps I no longer know who I am. I look at the lucky ones, standing there listening out for the helicopter. I look for signs of guilty conscience among them. I don’t see any.
* * *
—
We were all gathered in the living room as Downing and Larsen cleared the rest of the house.
We had one man badly wounded, they had one dead – the sentry – and four wounded.